[Mailman-Users] The "right" way to reply to a mailing list

[Peter Shute]

Lindsay Haisley wrote:

> > And if html wasn't the default for so many clients.
> 
> Don't get me started!  To the best of my knowledge, there is 
> no unified standard for HTML-ized email.  Microsoft has "Rich 
> Text", Apple has another standard.  Digests can get mucked up 

The default for MS Outlook seems to be HTML rather than Rich Text.

> beyond usability if people use HTML email and it's included 
> in digests.  Hopefully all HTMLized posts to a digested list 
> are multipart/mixed with both a text/plain and a text/html 
> part so the HTML can be nuked before its digested and/or sent 
> out to subscribers.  If not, all bets are off, but such 
> emails are usually spam.

I've seen a plain text section that didn't match the html version (if I'm remembering that incident correctly).
 
> Nonetheless, IMHO HTMLized email the way of the future so 
> we'd better get used to dealing with it.

Yes, whether we like it or not. It's a pity though that such complex HTML is used. Do we really need anything more than the ability to bold and underline? I'd be happy with some of the basic Structured Text formatting commands, which have the advantage that they're still intelligible in plain text.

Peter Shute